Category Archives: Book Rush

[Unless David Duhr reads 80 books in the year 2013, he’s committed to reading publicly from Fifty Shades of Grey while wearing a hot-pink onesie.]

Let’s just skip the banter and the blah blah and get to the capsule reviews, shall we?

I knocked out ten more books in October, a couple of which I’d already made some headway into earlier in the year. Two months and sixteen books to go. It’s gonna be tight, and I’ll have one, maybe two, lengthy novels to read for review. Thankfully November and December involve a fair amount of travel, which means a fair amount of reading time. I’m going to need every free moment I can get.

Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, Stuart Dybek

You know those books that are so good you wish your name was on them? This is one of mine. Dybek’s debut story collection is masterful, and I regret that it took me this long to read it for the first time. There’s not a dud in the bunch. I don’t think Dybek is capable of writing a dud. Next up, The Coast of Chicago. And then everything else he’s ever written. (N.B. George Saunders credits Dybek’s “Hot Ice” as the story which influenced his career more than any other.) Continue reading →

[Unless David Duhr reads 80 books in the year 2013, he’s committed to reading publicly from Fifty Shades of Grey while wearing a hot pink onesie. Follow the Book Rush here.]

Later this year I intend to write about what this march to 80 books is doing to my reading habits, and to the way I feel about reading. I would do it now, but I need to keep reading. Leave me alone.

I cracked the 50 mark in early September, but I am still lagging behind: through three-quarters of the year I should be at 60 books, instead of 54. I might have to start breezing through a hot mess o’ Hardy Boys books. (Would that be cheating? I don’t know. I never really laid down any ground rules.)

Since I last checked in, I’ve polished off 10 more books. And goddamn, I’m very excited to tell you about them!

AUGUST

A Night to Remember, by Walter Lord

The definitive narrative about the Titanic, this is a book I’ve revisited several times since I first read it as a youngster. I stumbled across it recently and gave it another read to see how well it holds up, ten or so years since I last looked at it.

It holds up well. The book reads like a novel, and Lord was the first writer to spend any significant time presenting the story of the steerage class, those poor (x2) folks, immigrants mostly, who were pretty much left to die by the sinking ship’s crew. I’m not a Titanic buff, so I can safely say that even readers with passing interest in the story will find lots to like here. Continue reading →

[Unless David Duhr reads 80 books in the year 2013, he’s committed to reading publicly from Fifty Shades of Grey while wearing a hot pink onesie.]

While my road to 80 books is paved with good intentions (or something), it won’t always be smooth. Last time out I bitched about the 520-page werewolf novel I had to review, and the sour taste it left in my mouth proved a bit of a stumbling block: April, May and June saw me complete a total of five books, knocking me off the strong pace I set early in the year.

The good news is, I knocked out 14 books in July, bringing my total to 44 and getting me back on track to hit my goal of not doing a public reading of Fifty Shades of Grey clad in a hot-pink onesie.

So that’s good.

In June I began reading about a dozen story collections, bouncing back and forth between them, but only finishing one before month’s end. Therefore July saw me finish several books I started the previous month.

There are too many books here to do a capsule review of each, so I’ll keep ’em brief. Mmmkay?

April:

This is a hella fun read about two Lennon-and-McCartney-like norteño musicians in Mexico, translated from the Spanish by the folks at El Paso’s Cinco Puntos small press, the ones who notched the 2012 PEN/Faulkner Award for Ben Saenz’s Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club, reviewed for the Texas Observer by your own Nico Vreeland. [Pause for breath.] A quick and entertaining read; due out in mid-August. Continue reading →

[Unless David Duhr reads 80 books in the year 2013, he’s committed to reading publicly from Fifty Shades of Grey while wearing a hot pink onesie.]

Last month I stated on my blog a goal of reading 80 books in 2013, and I asked friends to suggest methods of public shaming and humiliation if I don’t reach this goal. I did this partly for accountability and partly because I’m a whorey attention whore.

The consensus was that if I fail I must perform a public reading of Fifty Shades of Grey while wearing a hot-pink onesie. (Imagine being inside the mind of the person who envisions me in tight baby-pajamas.)

After a strong start to the year, knocking over a dozen books in January and another nine in February, 80 looked to be a breeze. But I ran into a March buzzsaw that began with a bookless week in Boston: four days for AWP—where nobody reads a damn thing—and the surrounding four days going on benders with the gang here at Chamber Four.

And then I took an assignment to review a 520-page werewolf novel, and the longer I read this book, the further away the ending seems. So between travel, dice baseball (more on that later), and these goddamn werewolves, I only read four books in March and am starting to browse jumbo hot-pink onesies.

Now that I’m firmly entrenched in this project, for the rest of the year I’m going to cover my monthly progress for you here at C4, and include a quick review of each book.

And if I come up short, we’ll include some onesie video footage here on the site. Here we go.

Bottom of the 33rd, Dan Barry

This book tells the story of a 1981 Triple-A baseball game that went 33 innings and ran very, very deep into a frigid Rhode Island night (it was eventually concluded days later). Among the future big-leaguers were Cal Ripken Jr., and a bunch of guys that BoSox fans will remember from the ’86 debacle: Wade Boggs, Rich Gedman, Bruce Hurst, Marty Barrett, and more. But Barry, an NYT staff writer, focuses on the stories of those players who never made it above AAA, including Dave Koza, Pawtucket’s cleanup hitter, who starred in the minors for years but never received a call-up. (He just couldn’t hit the curveball.)

Barry’s writing is stellar throughout. The book has the leisurely pace of a ballgame, but offers several moments of quick excitement—and plenty of devastating sadness and bitter nostalgia over missed or blown opportunities. (Note especially the story of Bobby Bonner, who was called up by the Orioles late one season, missed a groundball, got shitcanned by Earl Weaver and never saw the Majors again.)

This is one of the best baseball books I’ve ever read. You don’t have to be a Sox fan, or even a fan of the game, to enjoy it. And if you’re a failed ballplayer yourself, take a deep breath and plunge in. Consider it therapy. Continue reading →

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